


devotion/separation

by unthank



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Break Up, Getting Together, M/M, Overthinking, Post-Time Skip, Pre-2021 Olympics, Unreliable Narrator, commitment issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:22:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unthank/pseuds/unthank
Summary: love is a weapon
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	devotion/separation

**Author's Note:**

> [wherever you stray, i follow. i'm begging for you to take my hand](https://open.spotify.com/track/0lx2cLdOt3piJbcaXIV74f?si=OcrcGcsOTQmk8kDmRrQbvQ)
> 
> cw: implied sexual content, metaphorical gore imagery

**i.** **sea**

Atsumu thinks of himself as a man who has everything together. ****

He knows what he likes, who he likes; he knows what makes his red blood bleed. It’s winter and he’d usually be cold, but everything he likes is warming his hard-worked body. ****

There’s something delirious about having another man’s body against your own. It’s feverish— addictive— Atsumu can never get enough of it. ****

It’s another boy’s mouth against his own, another man’s hand entangled in his hair. It’s tasting Kita’s name against his tongue as he visits him in Osaka, both adults in their own right at last, but neither old enough to know what this kiss meant. Atsumu wasn’t sure when it started to be like this. He didn’t ever want it to stop. ****

But these things aren’t always meant to last and Kita was never his boyfriend anyway. They slipped, easily, without question, back into the heartfelt routine of friends who’ve known each other for years. Rice in one hand, their futures in another. ****

Moving from one boy to another wasn’t something usual for Atsumu. Kita knew this, everyone did. Atsumu lay in a large expanse of sea, drifting to shores of other boys’ love without question, without hesitation. But he never stayed long; he came and went like the tide, called back into the ocean with the grace and ferocity only a man made of uncertainties could have.

Atsumu was never one to be snared.

**ii. tide**

Sakusa Kiyoomi came into Atsumu’s life like a tsunami.

If he was poetic, inclined in any way to wax lyrical about the boys he found himself enamoured with, Atsumu would compare the curls behind Sakusa’s ear to the rolling waves during a storm. But he wasn’t made to write love notes over a man he just started to know, he never had been. People like Atsumu are far too concerned with the vicious bite of boy-teeth against sweat covered skin.

It’s hard not to fall in bed with someone who gives you himself, who does everything right until it’s finished. Atsumu is just a man after all, how can he deny himself the cravings his mortal flesh desires?

And if Sakusa was like a tsunami, he came into Atsumu’s life with every intent of destroying him. His hand on the back of his neck, his teeth in his shoulder — on top of him, under him, in between his guts and common skin. He ruined the steady tides Atsumu had created. He took him apart with more violent care than any man had before; silent words against his, promises made against tender raw throats.

What could Atsumu do but fall?

**iii. bait**

_Is this love?_ He wants to ask. He thinks it to himself. Sakusa’s hands hold him like he might try to escape, as if he looked away for even a second, Atsumu would have disappeared. 

Atsumu knows how to love, he does. He fills himself with adoration for everyone around him more than he can bear; his brother, his mother, his first love in the form of his high school captain and the friends he finally made on the brink of adulthood. But Atsumu doesn’t know how to receive the love they give in return, he knows this, he doesn’t know how to stop himself from snapping and biting the hands that try to hold him close. 

He wished he could stop. He wished he knew how to understand that people could love him just the same as he loves them. A vicious thing is curled up in his chest and Atsumu, for all he’s worth, is a cornered, wild thing. 

(His mother, when he confessed to her that he didn’t think he could let another boy love him, let his friends show they care, turned to him and whispered, “ _I gave that to you, my savage boy. One day it will pass._ ”

He wasn’t sure it would.)

Sakusa makes him hope he could change. That underneath his burning skin he can let this unfathomable man love him and give him his own love in return. He never wants to let this go. If he could, if his soul allowed, he wanted to taste the strawberry lip balm on Sakusa’s mouth for the rest of his life. This man made him eternally sentimental.

What he wanted— softness where violence took place, care where he tried to fight.

Can a boy built on strength learn to feel gentle?

**iv. snare**

Atsumu was near enough twenty-four when his monster came to face it’s whole truth. If he’d been born a beast, his teeth would have grown twice their length and his eyes, though warm brown now, would bleed with the anger only a hellhound could believe. Red, bloodshot. He wasn’t sure if he deserved to be considered a human boy.

Perhaps, he considered, in the night when everyone had left the kitchen to sleep, his soul had taken the idea of a Monster Generation far too seriously.

What the point, in the end, in letting someone love you when they could disappear? The sport they loved more dearly than anything else could take them to all ends of the earth. Half of them in the United States and the other in the Netherlands; maybe one following the other to Argentina, endlessly trailing after and aching for a love they hungered for. It was never there. They’d never be satisfied with a compromise made to the thing they loved the most. 

Atsumu knew that. He hoped Kiyoomi did too.

And _God_ , yes of course he wanted to love him. He wanted to be as devoted as Osamu was to his boyfriend, he wanted to be as devoted to Kiyoomi as he was to volleyball, and to know that every part of it was returned. But how could he do that to him? How could he let a boy who trusted him, who turned his rough touch to reverence so easily, love him like he was his all?

He couldn’t. Miya Atsumu was many things, but he was never cruel.

Wild boys like him snap and snarl at every snare they find themselves encased within. He wouldn’t let this one trap them both.

**v.** **gut**

It was winter and Atsumu found himself handing back the apartment keys Kiyoomi gave to him. They were cut, perfectly, just for him, he knew they were. He’d been given something more than trust and now, before he could regret it and drown the man he loved, he gave it back, fox shaped keychain and all. 

Kiyoomi didn’t say anything for a while. He stood, stiller than stone, his neat wool coat buttoned up to his chin and his hair damp with snow.

 _He’s beautiful_ , Atsumu thought. _I could’ve had him forever_.

Forever doesn’t exist for them. He knew that, just like he knew so many other things. It was kinder to set Kiyoomi free before either of them burned the other, unsatisfied until the very end. And he’d told him that, explained to him everything he’d thought through and why, because of who they were, they could never be as satisfied as boys born from regularity. 

He loved him. He did. Atsumu was sure part of him always would. But he couldn’t let Kiyoomi do the same.

“This is not love,” was all Kiyoomi said. His eyes were darker than before, great bleak abysses with no light to be seen — there was nothing for Atsumu to see. _This is not love_.

But if this was supposed to be the right thing, then why was there a knife in Atsumu’s gut, twisting and pulling until half his body spilled into the snow beneath them. And why was it, then, that all his soul was turning in his chest and beating to be free, hot tears burning his face when everything he did was supposed to save them both.

 _This is not love_. This is a weapon.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic fits in with the same universe as vivisection does, but takes place before sakusa and kunimi become involved. there'll be more to this universe, but for now, these are glimpses into the misunderstandings and missed love these boys experience
> 
> i don't have much to say here for once. originally i planned to have ocean metaphors throughout, but somewhere along the way they became more aligned to fishing
> 
> thank you so much for reading!
> 
> [twitter @kuguken](https://twitter.com/kuguken)
> 
> [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/heresy)


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